Page 80 of Game Misconduct

He sat down on one of the benches and frowned. Like, now it was pretty obvious, but it really had hit him like a sledgehammer to the side of the head, or more accurately, like Sharma’s right hook to the side of his head. Danny was so obsessed with the idea of Mike going back to school because he didn’t wantMiketo end up in his mid-thirties without options, feeling like the world was ending. Because Danny felt like he didn’t have options and like the world was ending.

“Why the fuck don’tyougo back to school, then?” Mike said aloud, before he could stop himself.

“What?” some random dude in the corner responded, looking up from his gym bag. “I have a master’s degree.”

“Notyou, I don’t fucking care about your master’s degree.”

Danny wanted him to go back to school because Danny wanted to save him, or something stupid like that, even though Mike had never had more than a few concussions in his whole career and the only thing he’d ever broken was his nose, and his ribs, and his hand, once. But why would Danny bring it up now? Because he was worried about his injuries, or his drinking, or whatever was going on more now? Was there something he hadn’t told Mike?

Mike went home and instead of taking a nap before the game, he spent some time googling shit like,late college entrance requirementsandonline degree don’t have time for classesand then,community college. He got overwhelmed pretty quickly, because almost all of the online programs were degree dependent, and at places that didn’t sound like he’d really want to go anyway, and the only thing he could really remember about high school was that he’d hated every minute of it. He hadn’t ever been good at anything except hockey. Picking a major right out of the gate would have been like trying to buy sticks without testing them first and just letting the equipment guys do it for you. You’d end up out on the ice with something with the wrong length and the wrong flex.

He wanted to text Danny and tell him,you’re wrong about me, I could never do this, Icannever do this, but Danny was dealing with enough shit of his own, so he kept that thought to himself, and instead texted Bee,if i wasnt a hockey player what do u think id be good at instead, and immediately regretted it when she called him instead of answering.

She didn’t sound like herself. If it was anyone except Bee, he would have said panicked. But Bee didn’t get panicked. “Are you okay? Are you injured? Are you quitting?”

“No! It was a hypothetical q—I was just asking.”

“Okay, good.” He could almost picture her glare. “Tabarnak, you scared theshitout of me, Michael.”

“It’s just someone asked me that the other day and I just can’t think of what I’d do. I thought, uh, maybe you’d know what I’m good at.”

Bee was silent for a long moment, and said, “I don’t know what I’d do either. I can’t picture us doing anything else.”

“We’re gonna get old eventually. I just...don’t know what else I’d do.”

“I don’t like thinking about it.Youshouldn’t think about it.”

“So you don’t know either?”

“I’m sorry, Michael. I just always assumed I would worry about it when it happened.”

“Right. Thanks, Bee.”

“It’smywhole life andyourwhole life, and that’s not a bad thing, okay?”

Mike thought about Danny and said, “I dunno, Bee, sometimes I think it can be. But thanks for hearing me out, buddy.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help.”

There were a lot of things Bee could help him with, but this wasn’t it. And he couldn’t ask Danny. Mike took a deep breath and shelved thoughts of college for now. Maybe, one day, in the future he would give it a try, if only to make Danny happy. But for now there were a million other things on his mind.

After all, he had time.

IV. SPRING

Chapter Seven

March

Danny felt more and more that he was running out of time. He was paying more attention to his body, which was a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing because he would maybe be able to drag it through the playoffs and take the time to recover over the summer, but it was a curse because every minute he was aware of just how much pain he had to ignore or numb to get through the games. It was likely they were going to make a deep run, too. They were sitting at the top of the division, with the Cons at number two.

Heading into the middle of March, Danny made a promise to himself that he was going to limit the Percs to only what was strictly necessary and to monitor his drinking until after the playoffs, when he’d figure out what his next move would be. He apologized to Gears, but things still weren’t quite the same there.

“You really hurt his feelings,” Landry said, on the ice during practice one day as they stretched. Stretching was always a bitch for Danny; it was necessary to avoid further injury, but his body didn’t move like it used to, couldn’t hold the poses as long as the young guys could.

Danny said nothing, because it was true, and he didn’t like it.

“I mean...you shouldn’t have lied to him like that.”

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